More Articles

By Alex WayneBloomberg News • Wednesday April 3, 2013 6:43 AM

WASHINGTON — Almost one-fifth of teenage mothers in the United States give birth to a second
child before age 20, limiting the chance of finishing their education or landing a job, a
government report said.

While teen birth rates have been falling in the United States for two decades, more than 367,000
girls ages 15 to 19 had children in 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a
report yesterday. About 18 percent of those were repeat births, the Atlanta-based agency said.

The analysis found that the repeat births are most common in a band of Southern and Western
states — Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Oklahoma, Nevada and Arizona. Doctors
and health-care professionals should discuss birth control with teenage patients and remind those
who are sexually active to use condoms, the CDC said.

“When young mothers postpone a second birth, they have greater educational and job
opportunities,” Leslie Kantor, vice president of education at Planned Parenthood Federation of
America, said in a statement. “The best way to prevent teen pregnancy across the board is by
investing in effective sex education, encouraging teens to talk to their parents, and ensuring
access to birth control.”

Only 20 percent of teenage mothers use the most-effective birth control available, including
hormonal implants and intrauterine devices which don’t require daily maintenance, the CDC said.Even
so, births among teenagers are waning. The agency said 19.5 percent of teenage births in 2007 were
second children or more.

“Teens, parents, health-care providers and others need to do much more to reduce unintended
pregnancies,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a news release.

The 2010 health-care law, the Affordable Care Act, might help reduce teen births because it
requires insurers to cover contraceptives without out-of-pocket charges to patients, Kantor said.
In five of the states with the highest rates of repeat teen births — Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana,
Mississippi and Georgia — Republican governors have resisted the law, refusing to build insurance
marketplaces or expand Medicaid to cover people who don’t get insurance through their jobs.